


Denim

by xoxoMouse



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Catharsis, Claire centric, Cute, Daddy Issues, Dreamhunter, F/F, Fluff, Found Family, Gen, Getting Together, Happy Ending, I banged this out in a day sorry if it's structurally unsound, Short, Wayward Sisters, castiel and dean are mentioned offhand, claire novak x kaia nieves, soft, this is a claire fic, wlw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:40:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28012563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xoxoMouse/pseuds/xoxoMouse
Summary: The inherent protection of a denim jacket and the inherent vulnerability that comes with sharing it.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Kaia Nieves/Claire Novak
Comments: 2
Kudos: 30





	Denim

Claire stole her first jacket. It belonged to her friend’s Dad. It was too big for her, smelled like nicotine and his aftershave and it was the first gateway into an adulthood that she was not ready to step into. 

Her friend and her dad were both getting sick of her after a week. She’d invited Claire over for a sleepover a couple of days ago and she hadn’t gone home yet. She’d only said yes because her mother had been gone for almost two months now and the only food left in the house was half a jar of relish and a can of tuna. She’d fed them some story about her Mom being out of town for work but she knew that would blow up on her soon, there was only so long she could avoid giving him her mom’s cell number. Claire knew she wouldn’t answer, anyway. Mom hadn’t picked up since the second day. She had to leave soon but she also knew she couldn’t go home, not alone, not until her Mom was home and only God knew when that would be.

Well. Maybe not even him.

Her friend’s dad fell asleep watching Dateline in his recliner soon after they went to bed every night. He slept like a bear but she still tiptoed through the living room after she left a bogus note about her mom getting home late and picking her up pinned to the fridge. 

She was just going to leave. She hadn’t planned on taking anything; she’d never stolen anything before. She’d never needed to.

The harsh wind outside was knocking fall bare branches into the window and she knew it was a long walk home. The guilt nipped away at her stomach when she slipped her arms through the oversized sleeves but she knew the cold would nip her worse. When she felt the weight of the leather wallet in the pocket she started to sweat. She thumbed through it. $100.

She pocketed half and left the wallet in one of his other jackets. She’d spent the last of her piggy bank savings on  pb&j and she still needed a bus ticket to get to her grandparents' house. That cost money. The guilt faded about halfway through the hour and a half walk back to her house. The clock read 3 a.m. when she locked the door behind her and trudged up to her parent’s bedroom to crawl under their abandoned covers. The sheets had stopped smelling like her Mom’s shampoo a while ago and her Dad hadn’t even slept here in over a year. She clutched at his pillow while the smell of cigarettes from the jacket filled her nose. She’d ached for him back every day he was missing. Now it was worse. The angel,  _ Castiel,  _ had been inside her head, too. That raging comet knew every memory she had and she knew his plans. Being the angel’s vessel wasn’t hell because it seared every atom of her body and left her smelling like ashes for days after, it was knowing its thoughts. It had no intentions of ever giving her Dad back.

She left her house for the last time with her few vital belongings on her back and what was left of the jar of relish and tuna stuffed into the deep pockets of her jacket. 

*** 

It lasted years. The blue denim threads with cotton lining saw her through cross state bus rides, a new school, her first fight, and subsequent suspension. She got most of the blood out with baking soda. She was wearing it the night her grandfather died of cardiac arrest and the night her grandmother figured out what the pin on her lapel meant. It still smelled like cigarettes but now it was from the menthols she stole from older kids at parties she hadn’t been invited to. She stuffed her grandma’s jewelry into her pockets the day she found the pamphlet for a ‘Bible Camp’ buried in her purse and was out of Illinois by the next morning.

The first old building she tried staying in had already been spoken for. The blood never did come all the way out of the cuffs, no matter how many times she soaked them afterward.

Her first foster home, her first summer hustling pool with a fake I.D. and too much eyeliner, her first stint in juvie, her first salt and burn. Her first night at Jody’s. The jacket had seen it all. It had been ripped, slashed, stained, and sewn up more than it was really worth to fix it. It looked like it, but so did she.

*** 

The Winchesters weren’t exactly the visiting type. A couple of times a year they stopped by for Jody’s meatloaf and green bean casserole (and to check up on the waifs they dropped off on occasion.) She didn’t want to like them. She wouldn’t admit she did, but she couldn’t hate them, either, even if they did traipse around the country with the eldritch monster wearing her father like a rent-by-the-hour tux. She would admit, though, that Castiel’s pet humans had taste. The car, the lifestyle, the  _ weapons.  _ She never got close to any of those, though, they were under a tight lock and key. She was more than capable of getting into the trunk on a muscle car but she really  preferred not to have to listen to Sam and Dean bitch and whine. 

They were camped out on the couch and recliner after dinner, always welcome guests at the Mill’s after one too many beers to drive on. Claire walked past the stonewashed denim slung over the back of the loveseat after she and Alex finished the dishes. She tugged it up from behind Dean’s back while he was channel surfing and ran her fingers over the stitching on the seams. Sturdy, just broken in, deep pockets courtesy of the men’s section.

“Hey, what’re you--”

“I’m keeping this,” She told him and slipped it on. It already felt like armor.

“Uh, no.” Dean protested. “It just broke that in.”

She was already on her way upstairs. She had homework to pretend to do. “Yeah, thanks!”

*** 

The thing about Castiel was that there were little things she could do to make her forget her father was dead when she looked at him. She tried not to, most of the time, but. Well. What was the harm in pretending things were okay every once in a while? She’d even hugged him a couple of times. He almost smelled like her Dad did. She remembered. Every morning before he left for work he would wrap her in his arms, kiss the top of her head and tell her to have an amazing day. She remembered that. She remembered everything. So she remembered what it felt like to breathe in the comfort of him and she could pick up on the slight smell of holy ash on the skin that used to belong to the man who was Jimmy Novak. 

It was weird to find out Castiel and Dean were shacking up by smelling her father on his jacket. 

Still, it smelled halfway like home and that was enough for her to button it up around her pillow, bury her face in it and pretend she would get to hug her Dad again one day.

*** 

Alex dropped a patch on her desk while she was brushing up on vamp lore and scribbling notes into a field journal. She picked it up, ran her fingers over the stitching. A stake through a bleeding heart.

She smiled at it. “What’s this?”

“Birthday present.”

“My birthday is in July.”

“Christmas, then.”

She rolled her eyes and pocketed it. “Thanks.”

Later that night after Alex was asleep she sat on her bed with a needle and dental floss and stitched the patch carefully onto the pocket that rested over her heart.

It was cheesy but the patch felt like extra protection warding. Over time she collected more of it: A pride pin like the one she’d had when she was thirteen, patches from bands she didn’t even know but held pieces of the people she loved in the lyrics of, she even let Alex and Patience paint little devil wings and flames on the back panel. It became the patchwork of her life. 

*** 

Kaia got cold easily. It didn’t matter how bundled up she was, it was like she just didn’t make her own body heat. Claire didn’t fuss over people. It wasn’t who she was. Sometimes it felt like she didn’t even know how, but...

“I can hear your teeth chattering,” she said, shrugging out of the jacket and the hoodie she had layered under it and draping it over Kaia’s shoulders.

She knew Kaia was already doubled up on socks and sweaters but she did it anyway. She was the one who wanted to smoke on the roof in the middle of November, it was the least she could do. 

“This thing smells like weed and axe body spray, what are you, a 13-year-old boy?”

She laughed wryly. If anyone else had said it Claire would have decked them, maybe just outright shoved them off the roof, but instead, she took a long drag of the blunt and held the smoke in her lungs for a beat before she blew it into Kaia’s face.

“Well, I never got to be a thirteen-year-old girl, I think I’m entitled.”

Kaia’s smile said she thought Claire was funny even if she didn’t give in to a laugh. She wasn’t the giggly type; she made Claire work for it and she surprised herself by constantly putting in the effort.

Their shoulders brushed when Kaia took the blunt. Sioux Falls was quiet, the only sounds on Jody’s root were the branches rustling together in the wind and croaking of the few frogs that hadn’t slid into the mud to hibernate yet. Her heartbeat in her ears drowned it out.

“I’m in love with you.” The words spilled out of her numb mouth and sat suspended in the cold night air.

Her icy fingers wrapped around her palm and Claire lost her breath.

“I know.”

She ignored the nervous prickles along her skin and cupped Kaia’s cheek with her free hand. 

She leaned into it, eyes closed, and sighed contentedly. “You’re warm.”

Her nose was cold pressing into her cheek, but her lips were warm and soft.

They climbed back in through Kaia’s window she went right to the thermostat and cranked it up while Claire fussed with the seal of the storm window. She kicked off her boots and rubbed her hands on her jeans for the heat of friction.

“Stay?”

Claire knew she was gone for her; she would have done anything she asked. “Of course.”

Kaia swapped her jeans for sweats and kept the rest of her layers. Claire was too nervous to even ditch her bra before she slid in next to her under the covers. She hoped lending her body heat to the bed would keep some of it trapped for them.

“No funny business,” She teased, arms around Claire’s shoulders.

Claire snaked her arms under the jacket, hands clasped tight at the small of her back. She was giddy from the contact, she wouldn’t even think about doing anything to mess this up.

“I won’t move an inch,” She whispered. “I promise.”


End file.
